Rewriting Food Rules: Nutrition First

Nutritious food is an investment with guarantees dividends

Walk down any grocery aisle in America and you’ll find a strange paradox: a dazzling array of “foods” engineered not to nourish — but to hook. Salt, sugar, and processed fats combine into products whose purpose is pleasure, not human health. They are marketed aggressively, labeled deceptively, and consumed widely by people who are simply trying to feed their families.

This isn’t a matter of personal responsibility. It’s a matter of policy failure — one that shifts massive health costs onto taxpayers while corporations pocket the profits.

The problem isn't the macronutrient itself: salt, sugar, and fats exist for a reason. The problem is the corporations that exploit food science for profit.

The Problem: Modified Food Isn’t Just Unhealthy — It’s Addictive

Food science has advanced far beyond agriculture. Companies now employ teams dedicated to engineering “craveable” products that trigger our reward systems. These aren’t mistakes or side effects — they are deliberate business strategies.

Yet the average consumer has no idea how a product is designed or what its long-term health impact might be. We live in a country where:

• Most packaged foods are engineered to be overeaten

• Nutrition labels feel like legal disclaimers rather than clarity

• Marketing frequently targets children and low-income communities

• “Low-fat” or “zero sugar” claims mask ultraprocessed reality

  
  

Modified foods aren’t neutral. They are detrimental by design — and highly profitable.

“Not Harmful” Is Not the Same as Healthy

Right now, food safety law works like this: a product is permissible as long as it won’t poison you on the spot.

But the absence of immediate harm is not the presence of benefit.

A national food system should prioritize nourishment — not merely survival. At minimum, any product we allow to be mass-marketed as “food” should contribute to public health.

Corporate Profit, Public Debt

The consequences of poor diet are well documented:

• Heart disease

• Diabetes

• Obesity-related cancers

• Cognitive decline and depression

  
  

Billions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid spending are driven by diet-related disease every year. Corporations reap the profits on the front end — and taxpayers pay the medical bills on the back end.

That cost-shifting is a hidden subsidy, funneling money from the public to private companies. It’s no different than polluters contaminating a river and expecting taxpayers to clean it up.

The Policy Solution: Nutritional Minimums for Manufactured Food

We already regulate countless industries to protect public safety — cars, drugs, toys, building materials. Yet when it comes to the thing Americans put into their bodies multiple times a day, we’ve decided corporations can write the rules.

It’s time to establish baseline nutritional standards for any food product allowed on the market:

• Minimum micronutrient density

• Limits on engineered hyper-palatability components (e.g., added sugars, emulsifiers, chemical appetite stimulants)

• Honest front-of-package nutritional scoring

• Restrictions on manipulative advertising, especially toward children

  
  

If a product fails to nourish? It should be taxed like a health hazard to fund downstream public health resources just like cigarettes to incentivize production of healthier foods and to provide more economic resources for public health funds.

Healthy Consumers, Healthy Economy

A national shift toward genuinely nutritious food is not just a medical intervention — it is an economic investment:

• Lower healthcare spending

• Higher national productivity

• Better cognitive and physical development in children

• Stronger long-term workforce health

  
  

There is no downside to a nation whose people are well-fed in the real sense of the word.

Conclusion: Food Should Serve People, Not the Stock Market

When companies profit from making Americans sicker, the system is broken. Pretending that individual willpower can overcome engineered addiction is willfully dishonest.

Nutrition is foundational to life, freedom, and flourishing. Policy must catch up to science — and reclaim the purpose of food.

It’s time to say clearly:If it doesn’t nourish us, it shouldn’t be allowed to harm us.

And the responsibility belongs with the manufacturers — not the unknowing consumer who pays the ultimate price.